Missing mime-info database for use with File::MimeInfo

A requirement I have on a current project means that I need to determine the mime type of a file I load from disk. One way to do this is to use the File::MimeInfo::Magic CPAN module like this: use File::MimeInfo::Magic; my $mime_type = mimetype($path_to_file); However, on OS X, an error was raised: WARNING: You don't seem to have a mime-info database. The shared-mime-info package is available from http://freedesktop.org/ . The easiest way to solve this… continue reading.

Posted on 2 June 2014 in Perl

Speaking at DPC & OSCON

Two conferences are coming up that I'm speaking at: The Dutch PHP Conference takes place in Amsterdam and this year is between June 26th and 28. I'm giving a tutorial with Matthew Weier O'Phinney on Apigility which will provide you with a full day's teaching on creating web APIs with Apigility. I'm also giving a talk called Creating Models discussing the options available when creating the model layer of a typical MVC PHP application. DPC… continue reading.

Posted on 29 May 2014 in PHP

Styling a Chosen select to fit Bootstrap 3 better

One project that I'm currently working on is an internal business application that's using stock Bootstrap 3. I needed a searchable select box and Chosen fitted the bill, so I'm using that. However, the default styles for the Chosen select box differ slightly from Bootstrap. The most noticeable being the height of the control.

Posted on 13 May 2014 in Software

Perl syntax highlighting in Sublime Text 3

I'm currently writing a project in Perl for a client and have discovered that the default Perl syntax highlighting in Sublime Text is terrible. Fortunately, the community has stepped up and Blaise Roth has created the ModerlPerl package. Install via Package Control. To get all Perl files to open with the new syntax highlighter, use View > Syntax > Open all with current extension as… and select ModernPerl from the sub-menu.

Posted on 6 May 2014 in Software

Injecting dependencies into your ZF2 controllers

When starting working with Zend Framework 2, it's common to copy the skeleton and put your controller definitions in module.config.php like this: 'controllers' => array( 'invokables' => array( 'Application\Controller\Index' => 'Application\Controller\IndexController', 'Application\Controller\Blog' => 'Application\Controller\BlogController', ), ), The controllers keyword is picked up by the ControllerManager which is an instance of the ServiceManager which means that it creates the controller instance for you when the dispatcher needs it.

Posted on 23 April 2014 in Zend Framework, Zend Framework 2

Sharing host VPN with Vagrant

When moving a project into Vagrant, I realised that I needed the vagrant guest to share my OS X's VPN. I'm using a separate IP address within a private network like this: config.vm.network :private_network, ip: "192.168.101.101" So, after some Googling, I added this provider configuration setting: config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |vb| vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "–natdnshostresolver1", "on"] end and now my VM is sending data over the VPN. Note that this will not work when using the… continue reading.

Posted on 16 April 2014 in Computing

Some (disjointed) notes on provisioning Vagrant with Ansible

I've been playing with Vagrant over the last few days, using Ansible to provision it. These are some notes to remind myself for next time and are very disjointed! Configuring Vagrant to provision using Ansible is easy enough: config.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible| ansible.playbook = "provisioning/playbook.yml" end

Posted on 14 April 2014 in Computing

Writing to vagrant synced folders

I had a problem writing to the cache directory in my vagrant project due to file permissions. Fortunately Jeremy Kendall has already solved this problem in his Vagrant Synced Folders Permissions article.

Posted on 12 April 2014 in Computing

Immutable entities

I've been thinking recently about using immutable objects for some of my model-layer entities. That is, an object that cannot be changed once it is created. Immutable objects have a number of benefits including the fact that they are much easier to understand, simple to use and very easy to test. The main motivation for me is that an immutable object is very predictable as it's state doesn't change. This means that any calculated properties… continue reading.

Posted on 8 April 2014 in PHP

Use statements

I was having a discussion on IRC about use statements and whether they improved code readability or not. The choices Consider this hypothetical code: $cache = new \User\Service\Cache(); $mapper = new \User\Mapper\User($cache) $form = new \User\Form\Registration($mapper); $form->process($request->getPost()); vs use User\Service\Cache; use User\Mapper\User; use User\Form\Registration; // other code $cache = new Cache(); $db = new User($cache) $form = new Registration($mapper); $form->process($request->getPost()); The first snippet is completely unambiguous at the expense of verbosity. Those longer class names… continue reading.

Posted on 17 March 2014 in PHP